Bespoke Website With Lack of Front Page Content
-
Hey guys,
I wanted to ask you your opinion..
If you had a website - portfolio style for argument's sake and it was based on wordpress, obviously the front page won't be SEO friendly if you want to keep the minimalistic approach - there will be hardly any content to tell google what to rank your site for...
So my question is, can you use a plugin that Google can 'see' content - such as a long unique article - that the user can't see in order to help you rank? I.e. for Gbot, the plugin would load the content plugin as plain html, but 'hide' it from most people visiting the site...
What would you do in this scenario?
Your response would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance for your help!
-
I would not recommend putting anything on your site that Google can see but not your customers. From- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66353?hl=en
Hiding text or links in your content to manipulate Google’s search rankings can be seen as deceptive and is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:
- Using white text on a white background
- Locating text behind an image
- Using CSS to position text off-screen
- Setting the font size to 0
- Hiding a link by only linking one small character—for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph
-
Hi there
You can certainly make use of some design elements to help your website appear attractive, but so it still contains useful information for both your user and the search bots.
You might have seen this already with landing pages that contain a video. You might want to make the video the main focus of the page with little other content visible to direct attention to the video and subsequent call to action (CTA). However, what people have done in the past, with good success, is include the transcript in expandable content. There will be a bit of text saying "Click here for the transcript" and, upon clicking that text, an element will fire, a box will expand down and the content of the video is then displayed. The search bot can read the content at all times, which will help the page to rank (provided it is on-topic), while the text is hidden by default for user experience reasons. There are lots of variations of this that you might have already seen.
There are two things that I would always consider: 1) Make sure you are hiding the content purely for design/UX reasons and not nefarious reasons (such as hiding text on an irrelevant page/website) and 2) Make sure that the content is justifiably there on the page. I've seen some people "mask" their landing pages in they will show the search bots a long, informative article, but a user who visits the webpage will be redirected via javascript redirect (which bots can't follow) or will overlay the page with an iframe (which bots can't see) to show the user one thing but the bots something completely different. In my opinion, this goes too far and is manipulative, which might see your page and/or site penalised. With this, you are deliberately misleading the bots and/or users with what you want them to see. I would think that a plugin that injects content would possibly be seen the same way.
I suppose there is a bit of a grey area but in my earlier example it allows the users and the bots to see, if they so choose, the exact same page and layout. The difference is that you are styling some content so that the design and user experience is one that is tailored, but you are not restricting either the bot or the user from seeing the full landing page should they so wish. That (again, in my opinion) is acceptable.
So with that in mind I would look at incorporating design elements that allow the content to be displayed if wanted, but can be folded away by default. Expandable content, tabbed content, accordion menus - there are a number of ways you can do this. Try not to be deliberately misleading, but definitely design your web page around what you want your user to see.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google indexed wrong pages of my website.
When I google site:www.ayurjeewan.com, after 8 pages, google shows Slider and shop pages. Which I don't want to be indexed. How can I get rid of these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
HTML5 one page website on-site SEO
Hey guys, If for example, I'm faced with a client who has a website similar to: http://www.symphonyonline.co.uk/ How should I proceed with the on-site optimization? Should I create new pages on the website? Should I create a blog for the site to increase my reach? Please give me your tips on how to proceed with this kind of website. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
Multiple cities/regions websites - duplicate content?
We're about to launch a second site for a different, neighbouring city in which we are going to setup a marketing campaign to target sales in that city (which will also have a separate office there as well). We are going to have it under the same company name, but different domain name and we're going to do our best to re-write the text content as much as possible. We want to avoid Google seeing this as a duplicate site in any way, but what about: the business name the toll free number (which we would like to have same on both sites) the graphics/image files (which we would like to have the same on both sites) site structure, coding styles, other "forensic" items anything I might not be thinking of... How are we best to proceed with this? What about cross-linking the sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webdesignbarrie0 -
Not sure why Home page is outranked by less optimized internal pages.
We launched our website just three weeks ago, and one of our primary keyword phrases is "e-business consultants". Here's what I don't get. Our home page is the page most optimized around this search phrase. Using SEOmoz On-Page Optimization tool, the home page scores an "A". And yet it doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Canada, although two other INTERNAL pages - www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-team/ & /www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-approach/ - rank 5 & 6 on Google Canada, even though they only score a grade "C" for on-page optimization for this keyword phrase. I've always understood that the home page is the most powerful page. Why are these others outranking it? I checked the crawl and Google Webmaster, and there is no obvious problem on the home page. Is this because the site is so new? It goes against all previous experience I've had in similar situation. Any guidance/ insight would be highly appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0 -
Login Page = Duplicate content?
I am having a problem with duplicate content with my log in page QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickLearnTraining
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BAM-SP
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BRE-SP
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BTAF
QuickLearn Online Anytime - Log-in
http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/maven/purchase.aspx?id=BTDF What is the best way to handle it? Add a couple sentences to each page to make it unique? Use a rel canonical, or a no index no follow or something completely different? Your help is greatly appreciated!0 -
Facebook likes for website OR FB profile page?
I am expecting answers/views from social SEO experts. Should i encourage people to "like" my main page of my website OR FB profile page of website? Which one works better and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut1 -
Moving poor content to its own domain may risk being seen as a doorway page?
We have decided to move some thin content from our primary domain to an independent domain in order to lift the panda penalty. Does anyone have suggestions for how to avoid being seen as a doorway page? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0